Brain Shuts Off in Response to Faith Healer’s Prayer

May 7, 2010

It all makes sense now…

During the last couple of years I have put up a collection of some of the worst videos demonstrating some of the insanity and stupidity that can characterize “Christian” religion. If you have not had the privilege of seeing these then it is my evilness pleasure to introduce you: Christianity’s March Madness Insanity

Very likely during many of these videos, a Todd Bentley rant, the New Mystics, The Holy Ghost Hokey Pokey, a Benny Hinn altar call, you have thought to yourself, “How? How can people be this stupid and naive? Dear Lord, How?!?”

Well the answer is simple: their brain shuts off!

Brain shuts off in response to healer’s prayer

WHEN we fall under the spell of a charismatic figure, areas of the brain responsible for scepticism and vigilance become less active. That’s the finding of a study which looked at people’s response to prayers spoken by someone purportedly possessing divine healing powers.

To identify the brain processes underlying the influence of charismatic individuals, Uffe Schjødt of Aarhus University in Denmark and colleagues turned to Pentecostal Christians, who believe that some people have divinely inspired powers of healing, wisdom and prophecy.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Schjødt and his colleagues scanned the brains of 20 Pentecostalists and 20 non-believers while playing them recorded prayers. The volunteers were told that six of the prayers were read by a non-Christian, six by an ordinary Christian and six by a healer. In fact, all were read by ordinary Christians.

Only in the devout volunteers did the brain activity monitored by the researchers change in response to the prayers. Parts of the prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices, which play key roles in vigilance and scepticism when judging the truth and importance of what people say, were deactivated when the subjects listened to a supposed healer. Activity diminished to a lesser extent when the speaker was supposedly a normal Christian (Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsq023).

Schjødt says that this explains why certain individuals can gain influence over others, and concludes that their ability to do so depends heavily on preconceived notions of their authority and trustworthiness.

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“depends heavily on preconceived notions of their authority and trustworthiness.” As anyone knows who has grown up in a charismatic environment there is one very important rule: do not question the Lord’s anointed. Now you know why: your brain might start working!

I wonder if the same phenomenon would be observable if you took a scholar, an atheist, and a fundamentalist from Liberty University and were able to scan brain activity while listening to a sermon or reading the Bible. My guess would be that the phenomenon would be similar, but of course, testing would be required.